In 2010, I found myself presenting on Christian ‘wealth stewardship’ in Spanish. This was in Hendersonville, North Carolina as part of a regularly recurring conference of Latinx Episcopalians, an event conducted almost entirely in Spanish. I was there as a staff member of the Episcopal Church Foundation (ECF), an organization that produces resources to assist with congregational leadership and fundraising, and most of the attendees were clergy and lay leaders of Spanish-speaking congregations.
The purpose of my presentation was to make the case for the way the Episcopal Church understood stewardship and raised monies for congregations, the theory being that as most Latinx Episcopalians were coming from the Roman Catholic tradition, they hadn’t been exposed to mainline Protestant congregational fundraising practices such as annual pledge cards and creating reserve funds for capital maintenance. In preparing my presentation, I remember realizing how things like annual pledge cards assume stable annual income, and wondering about the extent to which mainline Protestantism’s practices of annual fundraising are shaped by the economic and cultural assumptions of a mostly white and middle to upper class denomination.
Nevertheless, I arrived that day with slides outlining the tenets and practices of how most mainline Protestant congregations do their annual fundraising, practices undergirded by a theology of stewardship - mayordomía in Spanish - in which all Christians are called upon to be stewards - mayordomos - of all that God has given us. Just a few slides in, however, I noticed that the small number of Latinos gathered appeared perplexed if not skeptical.
Eventually one of the men explained to me that the Spanish word I was using for steward - mayordomo - had many negative associations where he was from, that you wouldn’t want to be considered a mayordomo. Mayordomos were the people who exploited people like him and his family, the manager-in-charge who squeezed every cent they could out from the blood and sweat of their workers. Failing to grasp the gravity of his statement, I thought at the time that the point he was raising was a matter of translation and so we began to discuss other words that would work instead, like generosity and almsgiving, terms that were more familiar and resonated deeply. As Latinos, we’d all had the experience of knowing people who had very little in terms of financial resources yet who regularly gave so much of themselves, of their gifts, of their time and even of what money they had. We moved away from notions of ‘wealth stewardship’ and instead began talking about the generosity.
In the years since, though, I’ve thought much more deeply about the problematic history behind this word ‘steward’ - mayordomo - and have come to see this issue less as a matter of translation than as an experience of wealth stewardship from two different perspectives. Depending on where you stand, there’s a vast difference between the positive value of wealth stewardship when perceived from a place of power versus the experience of those who must bear the brunt of what is presented as ‘fiscal responsibility.’ When we ask ourselves how it is that people can be paid so little for doing such hard work, whether at the local Walmart, at meat processing plants, or as migrant laborers in fields, one should imagine the offices in which ‘stewards’ render profits by adjusting figures on a spreadsheet.
This gulf in perspective became especially clear as I began learning more about the history of stewards – mayordomos - in Latin America. Across many parts of Latin America, on the vast colonial estates called haciendas, the mayordomo was the head administrator in charge of making the plantations, mines, and factories situated there profitable. Whereas the owners of haciendas typically lived in major urban areas, it was the mayordomo who lived on site and whose job it was to rend and report profits back to the patrón. In a similar way that many Americans have an immediately negative response to the word ‘overseer’, mayordomos regularly used physical punishment, violence, and exploitation to attain this goal. Even into 20th century Bolivia, for instance, in studies on the labor practices of the hacienda system prior to 1952, there are examples of mayordomos whipping workers and threatening expulsion from the estate.[1] The means by which this profit was made, and the disconnection and detachment of the owner from the lives of the people who were impacted by the decisions of ‘sound stewardship’ are key here.
Defenders of the idea of Christian wealth stewardship may argue that the history that I’m citing represents something other than stewardship as it is understood in the biblical tradition, and that the stewards/mayordomos of the Latin American haciendas system have little to do with the images of stewardship present in the Old and New Testament. Yet there are surprising connections between the Latin American hacienda system and the vast Roman latifundias that relied on slave labor, ones in which ‘stewards’ played a similar role. Indeed, the later Latin American hacienda system is thought to be a close descendent of the Roman latifundias established in the Roman province of Hispania. This close connection may even be reflected in one of the few Gospel stories that explicitly mentions stewards and stewardship.
The Gospel of Luke’s parable of the unjust steward (Luke16:1-13) is, in fact, a portrayal of a mayordomo that would be familiar to both first century Christians as well as the small group of Latinos gathered in 2010. This parable hinges on the story of a landowner and steward who had pressed their workers into such exploitative debt that the workers could barely survive. It is the strange story of an unjust steward - a mayordomo - repenting and living into God’s proclamation of good news for the poor, including its characteristic release from debts, and it could just as easily be set on a Latin American hacienda as in a first century Roman Palestine estate.
The story begins with a rich man and his steward, a patrón and his mayordomo. The steward is summoned by the landowner to give an account of what he had done, at which point we learn he is about to be fired. The steward asks himself, “What will I do, now that my master is taking this position away from me? I am not strong enough to dig, and I am ashamed to beg” (16.4). We learn that the tenant farmers of the land there were held in extreme debt by the rich man and the steward, a practice that was – and has remained – a common means of exploitation. In order to ensure that he would be welcomed into these farmers’ homes once he has been dismissed, he decides to summon each of the debtors to halve the large debts they owe, an act weighted with symbolic significance of God’s mercy and freeing from debt. Jesus then instructs the listeners on how this is a good use of ‘dishonest wealth’: “And I tell you, make friends for yourselves by means of dishonest wealth so that when it is gone, they may welcome you into eternal homes.” This parable then concludes with Luke’s summary on the relationship between slavery, wealth, and money: “No slave can serve two masters; for a slave will either hate the one and love the other, or be devoted to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve God and wealth.”
And yet, over the coming millennia, wealthy Christians and the church have certainly tried.
I want to raise the morally ambiguous history of Christian wealth stewardship. In addition to exploring the language of stewardship, it is worthwhile asking how it is that the Church has come to serve both God and wealth. While there are certainly examples in the Gospels of buried talents, widows’ mites, and miraculous abundance in the Gospel, less clear is the extent to which such stories can be directly applied toward the building up of the Church’s institutional wealth and how, exactly, these square with the many other examples of profligate generosity toward ‘the least of these’? One of the few stories that is explicitly about stewardship is actually about using ‘dishonest wealth’ to free people from debt. Over and over again, notions of ‘wealth stewardship’ seem to me to be like trying to fit a square peg into a round hole, an attempt to squeeze principles of wealth management into the wildness of the Gospels. The Gospel of Luke advised the rich to pull down their barns and recorded Jesus’ advice to the rich young man to give away all the wealth he had to the poor. How, exactly, we got from there to multi-million-dollar capital campaigns, and the theological logic of wealth stewardship which undergirds such models, is a fascinating story to begin to unravel.
Tracing the history of how Christianity moved from Jesus’ condemnation of the wealthy in Matthew, Mark, and Luke - one in which he states that it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for the rich to enter the Kingdom of Heaven - to not only an embrace of the wealthy but also a theology of wealth stewardship that supports the building up of vast institutional wealth, is quite a journey to undertake. My own explorations have led me to the elitist Clement of Alexandria whose third century defense of wealth and ushering in of Stoic understandings of wealth stewardship were later embraced by Augustine in the fifth century. Clement represents a turning point in Christian thought about wealth and poverty insomuch as he defended the morality of inheritances, made wealth and poverty interior spiritual matters, and even made the case for ‘the honorable rich’ and ‘the unworthy poor’.
Alongside Clement, however, there have always been those who have found this approach problematic and who have pushed back against the tide. After Clement, I will look at the work of John Chrysostom who preached under the gilded roof of the Great Church in Antioch in the late fourth century. From that pulpit, surrounded by ancient ecclesiastical splendor, Chrysostom asked a series of troubling questions about how the church justifies building up its own wealth oftentimes at the expense of ‘the least of these.’ These questions about a church that uses golden cups to serve the Eucharist but fails to offer even a cup of water to the thirsty, still stretch across the millennia and require Christians as well as those of us who are the mayordomos - or stewards - of congregations and ecclesiastical institutions to transform our financial priorities. In this, we may find ourselves in the same position as the ‘unjust steward’ of Luke 16:1-13, needing to repent and redirect our resources toward the unburdening of ‘the least of these.’
In her book, SPQR: A History of Ancient Rome, historian Mary Beard includes a rare image of interaction between the very rich and very poor in ancient Roman society. This is from a very faded illustration from the House of Julia Felix from first century Pompeii depicting life in the Forum. In it, a wealthy woman is handing a hunched beggar a coin.
While this might at first seem to be a touching scene, this illustration is not a celebration of generosity but likely depicts what one is not supposed to do, akin to New York City signs advising subway passengers to not give money to people who are begging for help. Beard notes, “Roman moralists make numerous references to beggars - often to the effect that they are better ignored - and a series of paintings in Pompeii depicting life in the local Forum includes a cameo scene of a hunched beggar, with dog, being handed some small change by a posh lady and her maid, who are not obeying the moralists’ advice.”[2]
In her discussion of how poverty was generally viewed in Ancient Rome, Beard notes that “Elite Roman writers were mostly disdainful of those less fortunate, and less rich, than themselves. Apart from their nostalgic admiration of a simple peasant way of life - a fantasy of country picnics, and lazy afternoons under shady trees - they found little virtue in poverty or in the poor or even in earning an honest day’s wages.”[3] In this, Romans were drawing on prior Hellenistic traditions which found the disparities between rich and suffering poor a cause of laughter.[4] The first century Roman poet Juvenal quipped ‘There is nothing in the calamity of poverty that is harder to bear than the fact that it makes men ridiculous.’[5]
Although good deeds - beneficentia - and generosity - liberalitas - were considered virtues among the very wealthy, it was generally understood that such philanthropy was to be extended only toward those who could be useful on down the road: that is, worthy and respectable citizens, with a special relationship to the giver, who were able to give in return.[6] Indeed, when ‘the poor’ are mentioned by elite Roman writers, they are most often referring to fellow wealthy people who have fallen into sudden misfortune. Addressing traditions of Greco-Roman philanthropy, historian John McGuckin notes that “disparity of lot was simply how things were in the greater cosmic order” and “to worry about the poor was as futile as seeking to alter their karma by positive social actions.”[7] In the same way our society takes great pains to separate the rich from the poor, this fatalism was compounded by the insulated existence of the very rich. Scholar Annaliese Parkin notes, “Probably the rich did not in fact often give to the destitute: they will have been largely protected from the attentions of beggars in public by their servants, clients or lictors, and many, entrenched in the doctrine of euergetism or beneficentia, may genuinely have held that it was money not well used.”[8]
It is helpful to keep this broader context in mind when looking at Clement of Alexandria (c.150-c.215 AD), one of the earliest and most vocal Christian apologists for wealth and the wealthy and one of original architects of Christianity’s notions of wealth stewardship. When set beside the writings of other Christian writers of his time, many of the ideas he sets out in his treatise The Rich Young Ruler appear to come out of nowhere. It is only when one considers the prevailing attitudes of the Roman elite toward the destitute that it becomes clear Clement represents a continuation – a baptism of sorts - of the Roman elite’s comfortability with wealth disparities and vigorous disdain for the very poor. Such integration ultimately served the growing Church well: Clement’s views on wealth were embraced and expanded upon by Augustine of Hippo in the fifth century, and as we’ll see have become the basis for mainline Christianity’s current views on wealth stewardship.
In the second and third centuries, as Christianity advanced into the higher ranks of society, the wealth of newer members became a theological problem that had to be addressed. These communities wrestled with Jesus’ exchange with the rich young ruler wherein Jesus concludes that it is more possible for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for the rich to be saved.[9] This position would have warmed the hearts of the earliest Christian communities who lived just at or below subsistence level and who were the inheritors of a well-developed pious poor and oppressive rich tradition which looked forward to the reversal of fortunes in God’s immanent Kingdom. As the wealthy became members of Christian communities, however, new questions emerged: Could the rich also be saved? Did the rich have to give away their possessions before membership in the Christian assemblies? What was happening when the rich gave alms to the poor in exchange for the prayers of the poor? Clement of Alexandria is one of the first Christian thinkers outside of scripture to comprehensively address wealth, the wealthy, and salvation.
A member of elite Alexandrian society, Clement became the head of the catechetical school in Alexandria c. 200. His teachings and writings reflect his elitism and an indebtedness to Platonism and Stoicism that frequently appears to eclipse his appreciation for the Gospels themselves. Controversial in his own time, he represents one of the most intimate relationships to Greek philosophy within early Christianity, and his insistence - derived from Plato - that knowledge increases one’s moral worth was even then perceived as elitist and unhealthy.[10] Further, his desire to find a passionless middle way resulted in some of the more bizarre conclusions that Christianity has come to, particularly in the area of sexuality. While he argues that both abstinence and promiscuity are unnatural, Clement is among the first of Christian writers to say that sex between married couples should be only for procreation rather than mutual pleasure. This position still undergirds much of Roman Catholic sexual ethics and remains a cherished theological framework for making heterosexual couples’ sexual lives miserable and for categorizing homosexuality as unnatural.
In many respects, Clement’s conclusions about wealth stewardship have been even more impactful than his views on sexuality. According to historian Diarmaid McCullough, “In defending a Christian’s responsible stewardship of riches, he provided an extended framework for Christian views of money and possessions for centuries to come.”[11]
At the outset of The Rich Young Ruler, Clement toes the line established by his Christian predecessors by describing wealth as “a dangerous and deadly disease”, one that endangers the salvation of the wealthy. By the end of that same treatise, however, Clement has laid all pleasantries aside and makes a vigorous defense for the harmlessness of wealth. He howls against the 'eye of the needle' and the first two centuries of Christianity’s critiques of wealth when he asks, “What harm has been done by one who builds economic security and frugality prior to becoming a Christian? What is to be condemned if God, who gives life, places a child in a powerful family and a home full of wealth and possessions? If one is to be condemned for having been born into a wealthy family through no personal choice, that person would be wronged by God who would offer a worldly life of comfort but deny eternal life. Why would wealth ever have been found within creation if it causes only death?”[12] This full-throated defense of wealth and, notably, the moral neutrality of (his) inheritance, rounds out a treatise full of startling theological moves.
The first and perhaps most striking thing Clement does is make the case for an allegorical interpretation of the parable of the rich young ruler. He states that the rich young ruler’s sin wasn’t that he failed to give up his wealth to the poor, but rather that he failed to understand that Jesus was speaking figuratively. “‘Sell all that you possess’: what does that mean? It does not mean as some superficially suppose, that he should throw away all that he owns and abandon his property. Rather he is to banish those attitudes toward wealth that permeate his whole life, his desires, interests, and anxiety.”[13]
Instead of requiring the wealthy to first rid themselves of their wealth, Clement believes that the new and unique message of Christ is that he is asking both the wealthy and the poor to dispossess themselves of their inner passion and desire for wealth.[14] Reflecting his indebtedness to Stoicism, Clement argues that the literal renunciation of wealth and possessions that Jesus speaks about is best understood as a new command to renounce and eliminate inner passions. “If an affluent person can control the power that wealth brings and remains modest and self-controlled, seeking God and placing God above all else, that person can follow the commandments as a poor individual, one who is free and unencumbered by the wounds of wealth.”[15] Clement effectively takes a Stoic’s crowbar to widen Jesus' eye of the needle so that the rich can pass through easily.
In discussing this parable, Clement also engages in a biblical sleight of hand that would set an important precedent by relegating the dispossession of wealth to ascetics and monks. “In the patristic era, the parable of the rich young man - a parable which appears in all three synoptics - was invariably quoted in the version of Matthew, who, unlike the other evangelists, added the qualification ‘if you wish to be perfect’ to Christ’s challenge to the rich man…”[16] Although Clement was using the Marcan text in The Rich Young Ruler, he inserts “if you wish to be perfect” at the corresponding point in his quoting of the passage. “Thus, the command to sell everything and to live a life of voluntary poverty literally became a counsel of perfection to Christians, rather than a precept. The vita perfecta, with complete renunciation of wealth, was only required of ascetics and monks.”[17]
Having made wealth a matter of inner disposition, and having relegated the requirement of dispossession to the realm of ascetics and monks, Clement then argues that wealth should be considered as morally neutral as a tool. It is wealth’s utilitas that determines its moral value. Like a hammer, wealth can be used to build up or destroy, and the Christian is uniquely able to offer wealth for the building up of righteousness. Therefore, wealthy Christians should not be asked to give up their wealth but rather offer it to the glory of God, including by directing it toward the building up of the Church.
How Clement arrives here is as clever as it is circuitous. Having shown how both wealth and poverty are, in fact, inner spiritual matters and the possibility of being both pious and rich, Clement turns to examples in the Gospel in which Jesus assumes the wealthy have wealth to give away (Luke 16:9; Matt 6:20; Matt 25:41-43). The primary biblical example Clement uses is Jesus’ parable of the unjust steward in the Gospel of Luke, the very same one already mentioned above. Clement dwells on Jesus’ instruction to the disciples to be like the unjust steward in his use of dishonest wealth to make friends for themselves, “so that when it is gone they may welcome you into their homes.[18] Yet his interpretation dwells less on the release from debt which is such an important aspect of the story and instead centers on the use of dishonest wealth to make friends for one’s self. But if the wealthy must use dishonest wealth to make friends, Clement reasons, doesn't this mean they must retain their wealth rather than give it away to the poor? Clement concludes that the wealthy should therefore not give their wealth away but keep it for the building up of righteousness.
In Clement’s view, wealth is morally neutral - like a craftsman tool - which can be wielded in a variety of ways. Because it isn't inherently evil, as so many of his predecessors had claimed, wealth can therefore be retained and put to good use. “An instrument, used with skill, produces a work of art, but it is not the instrument’s fault if it is used wrongly. Wealth is such an instrument. It can be used rightly to produce righteousness. If it is used wrongly, it is not the fault of wealth itself but of the user. Wealth is the tool, not the craftsman.[19] Distinctly absent are prior Christians' views of wealth as the fruit of stealing and exploitation, and the accumulation of wealth as the sinful withholding of that which was intended for the common good.
Augustine embraced and expanded on Clement's view of wealth's utilitas in the fifth century to make one of those breathtaking theological arguments that would serve the Church well as the Roman empire crumbled and its own institutions came to replace the prior systems and structures in late antiquity. Augustine held that insomuch as the moral value of wealth was determined by its use, it was the Church alone that should be able to own property as it was the Church alone that used this wealth to God’s glory.[20] He conceded, however, that such a move would result in societal disruption and so said that this transfer of all property to the Church should not take place, or at least not immediately so.
Finally, and perhaps most disturbingly, Clement’s narrow focus on the interior attitude one brings to wealth - rather than external wealth itself - allowed for the ushering in of the well-established Roman view of ‘the unworthy poor’. It is important to linger on this point for a while as it suggests a connection between our current notions of wealth stewardship and ancient Roman notions of detachment and outright disdain for the destitute.
With wealth now spiritualized, Clement made the case for the honorable rich, those who lived with humility and detachment from their wealth and used it for the glory of God, and contrasted these honorable wealthy from the unworthy poor who were so rich in vices and avarice despite their external poverty that they did not merit the generosity of the wealthy. Much like the moralists who would have clucked their tongues at the image of a wealthy woman giving to a beggar, Clement embraces the notion of the ‘unworthy poor.’ “Again, in the same way there is a genuinely poor person and also a counterfeit and falsely named: the former is the one poor in spirit with inner personal poverty, and the latter, the one poor in a worldly sense with outward poverty. To the one poor in worldly goods but rich in vices, who is not poor in spirit and not rich toward God, God says: ‘Detach yourself from the alien possessions that are in your soul, so that you may become pure in heart and see God.”[21]
Shockingly, Clement's insistence on 'the unworthy poor' leads him to an outright rejection of the notion that the poor are preferentially blessed by God. For “It is not a great thing or desirable to be without any wealth, unless it be we are seeking eternal life. If it were, those who possess nothing - the destitute, the beggars seeking food, and the poor living in the streets, would become the blessed and loved of God, even though they did not know God or God’s righteousness. They would be granted eternal life on the basis of this extreme poverty and their lack of even the basic necessities of life!”[22]
One can’t help but wonder if Clement ever truly read or absorbed the significance of Jesus’ beatitudes.
Through his strenuous defense of the wealthy and exasperation at the idea of the outwardly poor as being somehow preferentially blessed by God, Clement reveals himself as far more aligned with prevailing attitudes of the Roman elite toward the poor than many of his Christian counterparts. One of the most interesting points of contrast between Clement of Alexandria and other writers of early Christianity has to do with the seemingly unique appreciation that Christianity had for misericordia, or mercy, for the most destitute. Mercy – including the merciful forgiving of debts in Luke’s parable of the unjust steward – is an important way the Gospels describe God’s good news for the poor. In contrast, the Stoics, to whom Clement was profoundly indebted to, viewed misericordia toward the most vulnerable with suspicion and as a personal weakness, both because it undermined the ideal of being untroubled by emotion and because it suggested a transgressive questioning of the wisdom of how society was ordered.[23]
In Annaliese Parkin’s aptly named article, You do him no service: An exploration of pagan almsgiving, she echoes other scholars’ view that “Christian charity did not develop out of pagan munificence” and that “the two were concerned with fundamentally different sectors of ancient society.”[24] While there is extensive evidence that people were begging and received some support, Parkin maintains that these gifts primarily came from the lower rungs of ancient Roman society and that “organized material aid and services as the elite were prepared to extend to their social and economic inferiors were not directed at the poorest of Graeco-Roman society in the early imperial period... The destitute were never en masse targets of aid.”[25] In her evidence for the prevalence of begging and extreme levels of destitution, she notes that Roman laws had to explicitly prohibit parents from maiming their own children so as to increase the compassion and gifts extended to their families, practices which contemporary comparative poverty studies show as taking place in only the most desperate situations today.[26] Yet she argues that the compassion extended to the extremely destitute likely came from the lower rungs of society that interacted with people begging on the streets.
An anti-empathetic culture was embraced by the Roman elite. On the prevailing view of misericordia itself, Parkins notes: “The Stoics, in particular, saw in it a sickness and disturbance of the soul. Their ethics dictated that the wise man was to feel no pain over the misfortunes of his neighbour, for pity brings grief.”[27] She continues: “Understanding this is the key to understanding the Stoic disapproval of pity: pity was a self-regarding emotion, a pathos experienced by imagining oneself in the place of the pitied, which undermined the Stoic ideal of being untroubled by emotion, autarcheia.”
The Stoic emphasis on passionlessness - indeed, being without compassion - is what problematically connects Clement’s discussion of the honorable rich, the valuing of the accumulation of wealth, detachment from the destitute, and outright disdain for ‘the unworthy poor.’ There is a deliberately merciless quality to the way Clement discusses wealth and wealth stewardship that only begin to makes sense when considered in light of the elite’s prevailing attitudes toward the most vulnerable. Expressions of empathetic identification with the most destitute was viewed with profound suspicion as it was a breach of the hierarchical caste system that allowed ancient Roman society to continue to hum along.
In contrast, a part of Christianity’s peculiarity and gift was its belief that God’s mercy had resulted in God’s becoming human and subsequent identification with ‘the least of these’, and this comes through in other Christian writers’ appreciation - indeed, insistence - on misericordia as the basis for generosity.
The “Golden-Mouthed” John Chrysostom (c.347-407) represents a stark contrast to Clement of Alexandria in that he places God’s complete and compassionate identification with ‘the least of these’ as the centerpiece of his theology of generosity. Further, I’ve come to think that his Homily 50 on the Gospel of Matthew offers a pathway out of the tangled knot that Clement and his embrace of Greco-Roman wealth stewardship - with all its detachment and disdain for 'the unworthy poor' - have brought us to.
In the many homilies that Chrysostom delivered during his priestly ministry in Antioch and then as Patriarch in Constantinople, John repeatedly returned to the image of God judging the nations based on their care for the most vulnerable found in Matthew 25:31-46. In this passage, God judges the nations as decisively as a shepherd separating the sheep from the goats, with the crucial determining factor being whether people cared for the most vulnerable. In this passage from Matthew, the righteous and condemned are surprised to discover that God has been appearing to them throughout their lives in the faces of the hungry, the thirsty, the stranger, and prisoners. God considers the truly righteous to be those who fed the hungry, gave a cup of water to the thirsty, welcomed the stranger, and visited the prisoners; the condemned are those who turned the poor away and failed to do so.
Here God’s mercy and identification with the most vulnerable is complete: “Truly I tell you, just as you did it to one of the least of these who are members of my family, you did it to me.”[28] Swiss theologian Rudolf Brändle has explored how this passage served as the integrative force for much of John Chrysostom’s theology.[29]
Like many preachers who return to a passage over and over again, John Chrysostom frequently invoked Matthew 25:31-46 even when his homilies began elsewhere. John Chrysostom’s Homily 50 begins with a focus on Matthew 14:13-36, the story of Jesus walking on water and the healing of the sick in Gennesaret, but which ends with a powerful meditation of what it means to worship Christ’s body in both the Eucharist and ‘the least of these.’ In this homily, Chrysostom held that Christ’s body comes to us both in the Eucharist as well as in those who are hungry, strangers, and locked away in prisons. Always provocative, he pointed out that ‘a great gulf’ was created when Christian communities claimed to be devoted to Christ’s body in the Eucharist yet failed to see or care about this same body in the lives of the most marginalized: "For what is the profit, when His table indeed is full of golden cups, but He perishes with hunger?”
Regarding wealth stewardship, John argued that Christian communities needed to prioritize the least of these in society over the building up of individual or institutional wealth, primarily through service and the giving of alms. Christian faith requires that caring for the least of these takes precedence because it pertains to the eternal. He pointed out that while the Gospels does not explicitly condemn gifts for the building up of church buildings or the beautification of worship, this ‘sweetest passage’ clearly condemns neglecting to make gifts to the poor. Whereas both types of giving might be allowed and even important, compassion for the ‘least of these’ pertains to eternal life and therefore should take precedent.
In John Chrysostom, we find someone willing to speak hard truths in the face of Christianity’s increasing comfort with wealth stewardship, detachment, and neglect if not disdain of the most vulnerable. Tragically, his tendency to criticize the wealthy and bluntly point out the hypocrisies of the Church ultimately resulted in his condemnation, exile, and death. Chrysostom is one of the earliest martyrs to die at the intertwined hands of both the Church and imperial power. It was only after he died in exile in Pontus in 407 that the Church began to recover an appreciation for the significance of his preaching.
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Born in the middle of the fourth century, John Chrysostom’s father was a high-ranking military officer who died when he was still a child. Raised a Christian by his widowed mother, he began his career by studying law with the rhetorician Libanius but ultimately left this profession to become an ascetic hermit-monk. John returned to Antioch, however, when it became clear that his health could not sustain the rigors of asceticism. He was ordained a deacon in 381 and a priest in 386 in Antioch, where he appears to have flourished in this role.[30] Over the next twelve years, he would become known for his zealous preaching on materialism, wealth and poverty, and on matters that concerned the lives of the common people of the city, a reputation that earned him the Greek surname Chrysostom, meaning “golden-mouthed.”[31] [32]
It is very likely that Homily 50 was delivered during the latter part of John’s priesthood in Antioch and reflects some of his culminating thoughts about a city that was both highly prosperous and as prominent a Christian stronghold at the time as Rome, Constantinople, and Alexandria.[33] [34] Indeed, in Antioch by the middle of the fourth century, a majority of citizens were Christian and Christians were well-represented on the city’s council.[35] This did not prevent, however, extreme disparities in wealth and poverty. Rudolf Brandle notes: “The prosperous citizens had great palaces with marble pillars and halls, decorated with statues and frescoes. Some of the walls were covered with gold, and gold could even be found on the roofs. The splendor of the houses was matched by the luxury of the furnishings. The Antiochan upper class also showed their wealth in clothing and jewelry.”[36] John appears to have been particularly rankled by ostentatious displays of luxury and how this contrasted with the sufferings of the poor. He undoubtedly alienated more than a few wealthy Christians when he pointed out in a baptismal class that “Countless poor people have to go hungry so that you can wear a single ruby.”[37]
By the latter part of the fourth century, the wealth and splendor of Antioch’s great palaces extended to the city’s Christian churches. One of the finest examples was the octagonal Great Church, also known as the Golden House on account of its gilded wooden dome.[38] This was likely the site of where John preached Homily 50 which means that when he said “For what is the profit, when His table indeed is full of golden cups, but He perishes with hunger?” and urged congregants to prioritize almsgiving over church splendor, he was pointedly doing so in a highly decorated space of polished marble, brass, gold, and precious stones.[39]
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John Chrysostom is frequently described as both eloquent, outspoken, and tactless, and these characteristics are on full display in Homily 50.[40] This homily is a pleasure to read and was made all the more so in my case because I used the London publisher W. Smith’s 1885 translation which includes such pleasurable lines as “[Jesus] doth not even this, but departs, and in mid-sea permits the storm to arise, so that they might not so much as look for a hope of preservation from any quarter; and He lets them be tempest-tost all the night, thoroughly to awaken, as I suppose, their hardened heart.”[41]
As the starting point for Homily 50 was Matthew 14:13-36, John first dwelled on the fear the disciples must have felt as they were tossed and turned in the boat on the waters. John then transitioned to focus on the sick in Gennesaret who came in droves to meet Jesus so that “they might touch even the fringe of his cloak; and all who touched it were healed.”[42] In this story of the sick coming to touch Jesus’ cloak, John saw an example of what it meant to worship Christ’s body. This allowed him to begin a passionate argument on the meaning of the Eucharist. “Let us also then touch the hem of His garment, or rather, if we be willing, we have Him entire. For indeed His Body is set before us now, not His garment only, but even His Body; not for us to touch It only, but also to eat, and be filled.”[43] Then, under the golden dome of Antioch’s Great Church, Chrysostom asked the gathered congregants: “Wouldest thou do honour to Christ’s body? Neglect Him not when naked; do not, while here thou honourest Him with silken garments, neglect Him perishing without of cold and nakedness. For He that said, This is my Body, and by His word confirmed the fact, This Same said, Ye saw me an hungered, and fed Me not; and, inasmuch as ye did it to not to one of the least of these ye did it not to Me.[44]
In Homily 50 we hear Chrysostom exploring the theological significance of the Eucharist in light of God’s coming judgment of the nations as described in Matthew 25:31-46.[45] To worship the body of Christ in the Eucharist means that we must first worship the body of Christ in the most vulnerable:
“For what is the profit, when His table indeed is full of golden cups, but He perishes with hunger? First fill Him, being an hungerd, and then abundantly deck out His table also. Dost thou make Him a cup of gold, while thou givest Him not a cup of cold water? And what is the profit? Dost thou furnish His Table with cloths bespangled with gold, while to Himself thou affordest not even the necessary covering? And what good comes of it?”[46]
At the heart of Chrysostom’s argument is an awareness of hypocrisy -- or the “great gulf” as he calls it -- caused by the Antiochian Christians’ expression of Eucharistic devotion through investments in church buildings and splendor over compassionate almsgiving to the poor. John warned: “Let this then be thy thought with regard to Christ also, when He is going about a wanderer, and a stranger, needing a roof to cover Him; and thou, neglecting to receive Him, deckest out a pavement, and walls, and capitals of columns, and hangest up silver chains by means of lamps, but Himself bound in chains in prison thou wilt not even look upon.”[47]
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Interestingly, Chrysostom’s understanding of the Eucharist leads him to a subtler view of wealth stewardship that can serve to counterbalance the merciless version of stewardship of Clement of Alexandria. John doesn’t ultimately condemn the thoughtful stewardship of resources, but rather asked the congregants of the Great Church to first prioritize aid to the most vulnerable. In this, he managed to find a ‘middle way’ that remains sound advice for institutional leaders today.
John asked his hearers to reconsider their priorities by imagining Jesus’s reaction to the splendor of their churches and institutions: “For tell me, should you see one at a loss for necessary food, and omit appeasing his hunger while you first overlaid his table with silver; would he indeed thank thee, and not rather be indignant?” He goes on to describe Jesus as accounting such hypocrisy “an insult, and that the most extreme.”[48] “Let us flee then from this gulf; neither let us account it enough for our salvation, if after we have stripped widows and orphans, we offer for this Table a gold and jewelled cup.”[49]
In addition to being attentive to sources of wealth -- whether churches are stripping widows and orphans in the name of maximizing investment returns, for instance -- John’s homily and focus suggests that part of the role of institutional leaders is to reconnect ‘the golden cups’ with cups of water for the thirsty, the ‘bespangled cloth’ with cloaks for people weathering the cold, and the ‘silver chains of lamps’ with the welfare of prisoners in chains. Jesus is indignant, he argues, when Christians overlay his table with silver in supposed worship of his body while neglecting the bodies of the society’s ‘least of these.’
In this, Chrysostom was asking the Antiochian community to reflect on which investments are ultimately lasting. While investments in buildings are frequently thought of as long-term, ‘the sweetest passage’ of Matthew 25:31-46 insists that gifts to the poor pertain to the eternal. Chrysostom holds that while giving gifts to the building up of the Church is not explicitly prohibited by the Gospels, what is pointedly condemned is the neglect of ‘the least of these.’ Stated positively, golden cups are nice and all, but the worship of Christ’s body is most deeply expressed through a community’s love and service to the most vulnerable.
John offered almsgiving and service as a means of bridging this embarrassing gulf, a way that a Christian community that is lavishly devoted to the Eucharist could lavishly worship the body of Christ in the poor. “And these things I say, not forbidding such offerings to be provided; but requiring you, together with them, and before them, to give alms. For He accepts indeed the former, but much more the latter.”[50] In light of more recent, on-point critiques of charity which may serve the poor but fail to address the systems which cause such poverty, I would want to add to his list the importance of a focus on justice and systemic advocacy as a means for Christian institutions to fulfill ‘the sweetest passage’s” focus on ‘the least of these.’
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This seems like as good a time as any to briefly address one of the more bizarre concerns I’ve occasionally encountered while working in the Episcopal Church, namely the worry that the Church has become confused about its role and become overly involved in providing social services. I recall one particularly unctuous Episcopalian saying “We’re called to worship Christ, not be social workers!” Yet in Antioch - that is, in the very city where followers of Jesus were first called Christians[51] - the Great Church represents a striking example of an integrative model.
Partly as a result of Chrysostom’s preaching and leadership, the Great Church became known as a site of both liturgical splendor and significant social services. Early church historian Helen Rhee notes that John led multiple churches in Antioch, including the Great Church, to “organize major relief efforts for widows, orphans, virgins, beggars, homeless immigrants, the sick, and the poor through church-administered orphanages, hostels, and hospitals.”[52] Even as he critiqued the congregants’ focus on church splendor, Chrysostom’s homilies also included descriptions of the Great Church’s extensive ministries including a hostel for immigrants, a hospital for the incurably sick, and four dining halls where widows had regular meals.[53] The organizational support for these services was impressive and rigorous. There was a register of widows and “the priest or deacon charged with these lists was responsible for ensuring that no unworthy widows, or others who could live from their own means, tainted the table of the poor.”[54]
Beyond Antioch, there is even more extensive evidence of Christian churches serving as a social safety net for the poor in the fourth and fifth centuries. A particularly striking example are fifth century papyrological memos between Egyptian churches that offer insight into the day-to-day logistics of this safety net for the poor. In one of the memos, an unidentified Christian in hagia ekklesia requested a coat for a widow named Sophia from the steward of Saints Cosmos and Damian church. “[The steward] is assumed to have a store of coats ready for just such a request. This is not surprising; churches are known to have stockpiled clothes for charity.”[55] The writer of this essay, Adam Serfass, goes on to describe how when civil officials inventoried the possessions of one North African church in the early fourth century, they found 82 womens’ tunics and 47 pairs of womens shoes. “These items were surely meant for distribution to widows supported by the church.”[56]
Personally, I find such evidence to be profoundly moving evidence of how closely aligned social service has always been to Christian identity and worship. Alongside the theological treatises and powerful homilies that remain from this period, these memos requesting specific aid, inventories of shoes and winter cloaks, and descriptions of a registrar of widows, speak to the what Christianity is and can be. Unlike Clement’s disdain for the ‘unworthy poor’ and some church leaders’ dislike of churches becoming overly involved in what they see as social work, such evidence reveals the extent to which Christians have long been engaged in the work of distributing food, clothes, and relief aid to the most vulnerable. These are their own sorts of treatises on love, ones written in carefully maintained lists, cloaks and shoes, and feeding programs.
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Tragically, John Chrysostom’s story has a miserable end, an undoing that is deeply connected with his characteristic bluntness, his focus on ‘the least of these’, and the clash of civilizations this represented with the prevailing Greco-Roman attitude of detachment and disdain toward the poor.
In 398, John was unexpectedly called from Antioch to Constantinople to be ordained Patriarch. As was the case in Antioch, John preached forcefully against abuses of wealth and power, though in Constantinople he did so in the shadow of the Roman emperor Arcadius’ court and clergy. As was the case with the Great Church, he did more than simply preach but also began making moves to institutionalize a preferential option for the poor.
One of John’s early acts was to cut the budget of the bishop’s household and use the funds to support existing hostels and hospitals; he also began making plans to build several more.[57] It was as he was making these plans that he ran headlong into fourth century NIMBY-ism, the forceful opposition from wealthy estate holders to his proposal for building a leper colony just outside the city. The landed proprietors whose villas adjoined the proposed colony objected to the project.[58] Helen Rhee maintains that “the combination of his brutal honesty, asceticism, tactlessness, and uncompromising intensity for reform, joined with the enmity of the Patriarch of Alexandria and empress Eudoxia, brought about his downfall.”
John was deposed in 403, just five years after he arrived in Constantinople. He was subsequently recalled only to be deposed again and was subsequently exiled to Armenia. Tellingly, it was upon his being exiled that the work on the leper colony ceased.[59] [60] When it became clear that John was still able to have wide influence and argue his cause through correspondence, he was sent even further away, to Pontus at the eastern end of the Black Sea. He died as a result of the journey in 407.[61]
It was only after his death that John’s reputation was restored. Thirty-one years after being exiled to Pontus, John’s relics were brought back to Constantinople and received by emperor Theodosius II, the son of emperor Arcadius and Eudoxia.[62] And while today Chrysostom’s homilies are studied for their excellence of form, considerably less attention is paid to his passionate perspective on issues of wealth and poverty that are woven throughout.
Ten years after my conversation with the cluster of Latinx leaders in North Carolina, I am no longer certain that ‘wealth stewardship’ is something to which Christians are called. Christian wealth stewardship has deep roots in Clement’s baptizing of Greco-Roman views of wealth and poverty which prized detachment over compassion, and distance from if not outright disdain of “the unworthy poor.” Too often, it has meant that congregations and other ecclesiastical institutions have pursued growth in financial wealth while failing to ask the second set of questions regarding what this is all for. Wealth stewardship’s origins make it an uneasy fit with the examples of compassionate generosity that are a recurring theme of the Gospels.
Perhaps the only thing that I agree with Clement of Alexandria on is that Luke’s parable of the unjust steward in Luke 16:1-13 may be an intriguing model for institutional leaders today. I come to a very different conclusion than he does in reading the text, however. If we allow ourselves to identify with the figure of the unjust steward, we might see that God is calling us to repentance and transformation of what we have. Our role is not the continuous building up of institutional wealth, but that of releasing unjust wealth through Jubilee-inspired acts of generosity. But what does that look like today?
I will confess that I am reflecting on all of this particularly in my own role as an institutional leader, as someone who is helping to lead an Anglican Studies program at a seminary. Frankly, seminaries can become remarkably disconnected from their wider communities, cloistered islands of privilege that have little to do with the lives and needs of ‘the least of these’ just outside the walls of the institution. As I know from my own experience both as a past seminarian and now institutional leader, this takes place even in places whose stated values include justice and compassion for the poor. How one goes about reconnecting the ‘golden cups’ with ‘cups of water’ is a live question for me, a question that speaks to the hard work of transforming institutional resources toward the worship of Christ in the least of these. Personally, it is an exciting question because it is a deeply faithful one, a transformative challenge that moves beyond the theologically shallow traditions of Christian wealth stewardship that too often confuse and equate institutional wealth with God’s mission and grounds thinking about wealth back in the Gospel.
John Chrysostom’s Homily 50 is an illuminating example, then, of what this looks like. For John, worshiping Christ’s body in the Eucharist requires honoring the Christ who comes to us in the personhood of the least of these. With characteristic bluntness, he critiques churches that prioritize golden cups over cups of water for the thirsty, bespangled altar cloths (and vestments!) over winter coats for the poor, who fundraise for beautiful lamps hung from silver chains but have never gotten around to visiting people held in chains in prisons. While Chrysostom doesn’t outright condemn such investments, he urges fierce clarity around what actually matters to God and what pertains to the eternal. Chrysostom argues that while wealth directed toward the building up of our institutions may not be explicitly condemned by the Gospels, eternal salvation has to do with whether we – through our individual lives and institutions - are engaged in the compassionate caring for the least of these. Chrysostom describes a Jesus who would be incensed by common financial practices and investment strategies that end up stripping widows and orphans in the name of financial growth; it is in acts of charity, service, and justice building that we all begin to live out God’s call.
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[1] Smith, Stephen M. “Labor Exploitation on Pre-1952 Haciendas in the Lower Valley of Cochabamba, Bolivia.” The Journal of Developing Areas, vol. 11, no. 2, 1977, pp. 227–244. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/4190461. Accessed 23 Oct. 2020.
[2] Beard, Mary. SPQR, 444
[3] Beard, Mary. SPQR, 440
[4] McGuckin, John. The Path of Christianity: The First Thousand Years. Page 1027
[5] Juvenal 3.153-4 translated by Neville Morley in “The poor in the city of Rome” in Poverty in the Roman World. 35
[6] Parkin, Annaliese. ‘You do him no service’: An Exploration of Pagan Almsgiving', Poverty in the Roman World. 62
[7] McGuckin, John. The Path of Christianity: The First Thousand Years. Page 1026
[8] Parkin, Annaliese. ‘You do him no service’: An Exploration of Pagan Almsgiving', Poverty in the Roman World.68
[9] Matthew 19:16-30; Mark 10:17-31; Luke 18:18-30
[10] McCullough, Diarmaid. A History of Christianity: The First Three Thousand Years.147
[11] McCullough 149
[12] Clement of Alexandria, The Rich Young Ruler, in Helen Rhee’s Wealth and Poverty in Early Christianity. Ad Fontes: Early Christian Sources.Location 844
[13] Clement of Alexandria, The Rich Young Ruler, in Helen Rhee’s Wealth and Poverty in Early Christianity. Ad Fontes: Early Christian Sources, Location 764
[14] Clement of Alexandria, The Rich Young Ruler, in Helen Rhee’s Wealth and Poverty in Early Christianity. Ad Fontes: Early Christian Sources. Location 793
[15] Clement of Alexandria, The Rich Young Ruler, in Helen Rhee’s Wealth and Poverty in Early Christianity. Ad Fontes: Early Christian Sources. Location 844
[16] Hengstmengel, Joost W. ‘Wealth’. Brill Encyclopedia of Early Christianity Online. Ed. David G.Hunter, Paul J.J. vanGeest, & Bert JanLietaert Peerbolte. Brill Reference Online. Web. 29 Sept. 2020.
[17] Hengstmengel, Joost W. ‘Wealth’. Brill Encyclopedia of Early Christianity Online. Ed. David G.Hunter, Paul J.J. vanGeest, & Bert JanLietaert Peerbolte. Brill Reference Online. Web. 29 Sept. 2020.
[18] Luke 16.9
[19] Clement of Alexandria, The Rich Young Ruler, in Helen Rhee’s Wealth and Poverty in Early Christianity. Ad Fontes: Early Christian Sources. Loc 793
[20] Stender, Hennie. "Economics in the Church Fathers" in Oxford Handbook of Christianity and Economics. Page 27.
[21] Clement of Alexandria, The Rich Young Ruler, in Helen Rhee’s Wealth and Poverty in Early Christianity. Ad Fontes: Early Christian Sources. Location 804
[22] Clement of Alexandria, The Rich Young Ruler, in Helen Rhee’s Wealth and Poverty in Early Christianity. Ad Fontes: Early Christian Sources. Location 774
[23] Parkin, Annaliese. ‘You do him no service’: An Exploration of Pagan Almsgiving.' Poverty in the Roman World. Page 64
[24] Parkin, Annaliese. ‘You do him no service’: An Exploration of Pagan Almsgiving.' Poverty in the Roman World. Page 60
[25] Parkin, Annaliese. ‘You do him no service’: An Exploration of Pagan Almsgiving.' Poverty in the Roman World. Page 60
[26] Parkin, Annaliese. ‘You do him no service’: An Exploration of Pagan Almsgiving.' Poverty in the Roman World. Page 71
[27] Parkin, Annaliese. ‘You do him no service’: An Exploration of Pagan Almsgiving.' Poverty in the Roman World. Page 62
[28] Matthew 25:40
[29] Rudolf Brändle. “The Sweetest Passage” in Wealth and Poverty in Early Church and Society, Susan R. Homan, Ed., Baker Academic, 2008.
[30] Attwater, Donald. John Chrysostom. Penguin Dictionary of Saints. 1983. Page 194
[31] Rhee, Helen. Introduction to “Wealth and Poverty in Early Christianity” (Ad Fontes: Early Christian Sources) . Augsburg Fortress. Kindle Edition.
The purpose of my presentation was to make the case for the way the Episcopal Church understood stewardship and raised monies for congregations, the theory being that as most Latinx Episcopalians were coming from the Roman Catholic tradition, they hadn’t been exposed to mainline Protestant congregational fundraising practices such as annual pledge cards and creating reserve funds for capital maintenance. In preparing my presentation, I remember realizing how things like annual pledge cards assume stable annual income, and wondering about the extent to which mainline Protestantism’s practices of annual fundraising are shaped by the economic and cultural assumptions of a mostly white and middle to upper class denomination.
Nevertheless, I arrived that day with slides outlining the tenets and practices of how most mainline Protestant congregations do their annual fundraising, practices undergirded by a theology of stewardship - mayordomía in Spanish - in which all Christians are called upon to be stewards - mayordomos - of all that God has given us. Just a few slides in, however, I noticed that the small number of Latinos gathered appeared perplexed if not skeptical.
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| Hacienda La Fortuna in Puerto Rico |
In the years since, though, I’ve thought much more deeply about the problematic history behind this word ‘steward’ - mayordomo - and have come to see this issue less as a matter of translation than as an experience of wealth stewardship from two different perspectives. Depending on where you stand, there’s a vast difference between the positive value of wealth stewardship when perceived from a place of power versus the experience of those who must bear the brunt of what is presented as ‘fiscal responsibility.’ When we ask ourselves how it is that people can be paid so little for doing such hard work, whether at the local Walmart, at meat processing plants, or as migrant laborers in fields, one should imagine the offices in which ‘stewards’ render profits by adjusting figures on a spreadsheet.
This gulf in perspective became especially clear as I began learning more about the history of stewards – mayordomos - in Latin America. Across many parts of Latin America, on the vast colonial estates called haciendas, the mayordomo was the head administrator in charge of making the plantations, mines, and factories situated there profitable. Whereas the owners of haciendas typically lived in major urban areas, it was the mayordomo who lived on site and whose job it was to rend and report profits back to the patrón. In a similar way that many Americans have an immediately negative response to the word ‘overseer’, mayordomos regularly used physical punishment, violence, and exploitation to attain this goal. Even into 20th century Bolivia, for instance, in studies on the labor practices of the hacienda system prior to 1952, there are examples of mayordomos whipping workers and threatening expulsion from the estate.[1] The means by which this profit was made, and the disconnection and detachment of the owner from the lives of the people who were impacted by the decisions of ‘sound stewardship’ are key here.
Defenders of the idea of Christian wealth stewardship may argue that the history that I’m citing represents something other than stewardship as it is understood in the biblical tradition, and that the stewards/mayordomos of the Latin American haciendas system have little to do with the images of stewardship present in the Old and New Testament. Yet there are surprising connections between the Latin American hacienda system and the vast Roman latifundias that relied on slave labor, ones in which ‘stewards’ played a similar role. Indeed, the later Latin American hacienda system is thought to be a close descendent of the Roman latifundias established in the Roman province of Hispania. This close connection may even be reflected in one of the few Gospel stories that explicitly mentions stewards and stewardship.
The Gospel of Luke’s parable of the unjust steward (Luke16:1-13) is, in fact, a portrayal of a mayordomo that would be familiar to both first century Christians as well as the small group of Latinos gathered in 2010. This parable hinges on the story of a landowner and steward who had pressed their workers into such exploitative debt that the workers could barely survive. It is the strange story of an unjust steward - a mayordomo - repenting and living into God’s proclamation of good news for the poor, including its characteristic release from debts, and it could just as easily be set on a Latin American hacienda as in a first century Roman Palestine estate.
The story begins with a rich man and his steward, a patrón and his mayordomo. The steward is summoned by the landowner to give an account of what he had done, at which point we learn he is about to be fired. The steward asks himself, “What will I do, now that my master is taking this position away from me? I am not strong enough to dig, and I am ashamed to beg” (16.4). We learn that the tenant farmers of the land there were held in extreme debt by the rich man and the steward, a practice that was – and has remained – a common means of exploitation. In order to ensure that he would be welcomed into these farmers’ homes once he has been dismissed, he decides to summon each of the debtors to halve the large debts they owe, an act weighted with symbolic significance of God’s mercy and freeing from debt. Jesus then instructs the listeners on how this is a good use of ‘dishonest wealth’: “And I tell you, make friends for yourselves by means of dishonest wealth so that when it is gone, they may welcome you into eternal homes.” This parable then concludes with Luke’s summary on the relationship between slavery, wealth, and money: “No slave can serve two masters; for a slave will either hate the one and love the other, or be devoted to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve God and wealth.”
And yet, over the coming millennia, wealthy Christians and the church have certainly tried.
I want to raise the morally ambiguous history of Christian wealth stewardship. In addition to exploring the language of stewardship, it is worthwhile asking how it is that the Church has come to serve both God and wealth. While there are certainly examples in the Gospels of buried talents, widows’ mites, and miraculous abundance in the Gospel, less clear is the extent to which such stories can be directly applied toward the building up of the Church’s institutional wealth and how, exactly, these square with the many other examples of profligate generosity toward ‘the least of these’? One of the few stories that is explicitly about stewardship is actually about using ‘dishonest wealth’ to free people from debt. Over and over again, notions of ‘wealth stewardship’ seem to me to be like trying to fit a square peg into a round hole, an attempt to squeeze principles of wealth management into the wildness of the Gospels. The Gospel of Luke advised the rich to pull down their barns and recorded Jesus’ advice to the rich young man to give away all the wealth he had to the poor. How, exactly, we got from there to multi-million-dollar capital campaigns, and the theological logic of wealth stewardship which undergirds such models, is a fascinating story to begin to unravel.
Tracing the history of how Christianity moved from Jesus’ condemnation of the wealthy in Matthew, Mark, and Luke - one in which he states that it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for the rich to enter the Kingdom of Heaven - to not only an embrace of the wealthy but also a theology of wealth stewardship that supports the building up of vast institutional wealth, is quite a journey to undertake. My own explorations have led me to the elitist Clement of Alexandria whose third century defense of wealth and ushering in of Stoic understandings of wealth stewardship were later embraced by Augustine in the fifth century. Clement represents a turning point in Christian thought about wealth and poverty insomuch as he defended the morality of inheritances, made wealth and poverty interior spiritual matters, and even made the case for ‘the honorable rich’ and ‘the unworthy poor’.
Alongside Clement, however, there have always been those who have found this approach problematic and who have pushed back against the tide. After Clement, I will look at the work of John Chrysostom who preached under the gilded roof of the Great Church in Antioch in the late fourth century. From that pulpit, surrounded by ancient ecclesiastical splendor, Chrysostom asked a series of troubling questions about how the church justifies building up its own wealth oftentimes at the expense of ‘the least of these.’ These questions about a church that uses golden cups to serve the Eucharist but fails to offer even a cup of water to the thirsty, still stretch across the millennia and require Christians as well as those of us who are the mayordomos - or stewards - of congregations and ecclesiastical institutions to transform our financial priorities. In this, we may find ourselves in the same position as the ‘unjust steward’ of Luke 16:1-13, needing to repent and redirect our resources toward the unburdening of ‘the least of these.’
Clement of Alexandria
In her book, SPQR: A History of Ancient Rome, historian Mary Beard includes a rare image of interaction between the very rich and very poor in ancient Roman society. This is from a very faded illustration from the House of Julia Felix from first century Pompeii depicting life in the Forum. In it, a wealthy woman is handing a hunched beggar a coin.
While this might at first seem to be a touching scene, this illustration is not a celebration of generosity but likely depicts what one is not supposed to do, akin to New York City signs advising subway passengers to not give money to people who are begging for help. Beard notes, “Roman moralists make numerous references to beggars - often to the effect that they are better ignored - and a series of paintings in Pompeii depicting life in the local Forum includes a cameo scene of a hunched beggar, with dog, being handed some small change by a posh lady and her maid, who are not obeying the moralists’ advice.”[2]
In her discussion of how poverty was generally viewed in Ancient Rome, Beard notes that “Elite Roman writers were mostly disdainful of those less fortunate, and less rich, than themselves. Apart from their nostalgic admiration of a simple peasant way of life - a fantasy of country picnics, and lazy afternoons under shady trees - they found little virtue in poverty or in the poor or even in earning an honest day’s wages.”[3] In this, Romans were drawing on prior Hellenistic traditions which found the disparities between rich and suffering poor a cause of laughter.[4] The first century Roman poet Juvenal quipped ‘There is nothing in the calamity of poverty that is harder to bear than the fact that it makes men ridiculous.’[5]
Although good deeds - beneficentia - and generosity - liberalitas - were considered virtues among the very wealthy, it was generally understood that such philanthropy was to be extended only toward those who could be useful on down the road: that is, worthy and respectable citizens, with a special relationship to the giver, who were able to give in return.[6] Indeed, when ‘the poor’ are mentioned by elite Roman writers, they are most often referring to fellow wealthy people who have fallen into sudden misfortune. Addressing traditions of Greco-Roman philanthropy, historian John McGuckin notes that “disparity of lot was simply how things were in the greater cosmic order” and “to worry about the poor was as futile as seeking to alter their karma by positive social actions.”[7] In the same way our society takes great pains to separate the rich from the poor, this fatalism was compounded by the insulated existence of the very rich. Scholar Annaliese Parkin notes, “Probably the rich did not in fact often give to the destitute: they will have been largely protected from the attentions of beggars in public by their servants, clients or lictors, and many, entrenched in the doctrine of euergetism or beneficentia, may genuinely have held that it was money not well used.”[8]
It is helpful to keep this broader context in mind when looking at Clement of Alexandria (c.150-c.215 AD), one of the earliest and most vocal Christian apologists for wealth and the wealthy and one of original architects of Christianity’s notions of wealth stewardship. When set beside the writings of other Christian writers of his time, many of the ideas he sets out in his treatise The Rich Young Ruler appear to come out of nowhere. It is only when one considers the prevailing attitudes of the Roman elite toward the destitute that it becomes clear Clement represents a continuation – a baptism of sorts - of the Roman elite’s comfortability with wealth disparities and vigorous disdain for the very poor. Such integration ultimately served the growing Church well: Clement’s views on wealth were embraced and expanded upon by Augustine of Hippo in the fifth century, and as we’ll see have become the basis for mainline Christianity’s current views on wealth stewardship.
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In the second and third centuries, as Christianity advanced into the higher ranks of society, the wealth of newer members became a theological problem that had to be addressed. These communities wrestled with Jesus’ exchange with the rich young ruler wherein Jesus concludes that it is more possible for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for the rich to be saved.[9] This position would have warmed the hearts of the earliest Christian communities who lived just at or below subsistence level and who were the inheritors of a well-developed pious poor and oppressive rich tradition which looked forward to the reversal of fortunes in God’s immanent Kingdom. As the wealthy became members of Christian communities, however, new questions emerged: Could the rich also be saved? Did the rich have to give away their possessions before membership in the Christian assemblies? What was happening when the rich gave alms to the poor in exchange for the prayers of the poor? Clement of Alexandria is one of the first Christian thinkers outside of scripture to comprehensively address wealth, the wealthy, and salvation.
A member of elite Alexandrian society, Clement became the head of the catechetical school in Alexandria c. 200. His teachings and writings reflect his elitism and an indebtedness to Platonism and Stoicism that frequently appears to eclipse his appreciation for the Gospels themselves. Controversial in his own time, he represents one of the most intimate relationships to Greek philosophy within early Christianity, and his insistence - derived from Plato - that knowledge increases one’s moral worth was even then perceived as elitist and unhealthy.[10] Further, his desire to find a passionless middle way resulted in some of the more bizarre conclusions that Christianity has come to, particularly in the area of sexuality. While he argues that both abstinence and promiscuity are unnatural, Clement is among the first of Christian writers to say that sex between married couples should be only for procreation rather than mutual pleasure. This position still undergirds much of Roman Catholic sexual ethics and remains a cherished theological framework for making heterosexual couples’ sexual lives miserable and for categorizing homosexuality as unnatural.
In many respects, Clement’s conclusions about wealth stewardship have been even more impactful than his views on sexuality. According to historian Diarmaid McCullough, “In defending a Christian’s responsible stewardship of riches, he provided an extended framework for Christian views of money and possessions for centuries to come.”[11]
At the outset of The Rich Young Ruler, Clement toes the line established by his Christian predecessors by describing wealth as “a dangerous and deadly disease”, one that endangers the salvation of the wealthy. By the end of that same treatise, however, Clement has laid all pleasantries aside and makes a vigorous defense for the harmlessness of wealth. He howls against the 'eye of the needle' and the first two centuries of Christianity’s critiques of wealth when he asks, “What harm has been done by one who builds economic security and frugality prior to becoming a Christian? What is to be condemned if God, who gives life, places a child in a powerful family and a home full of wealth and possessions? If one is to be condemned for having been born into a wealthy family through no personal choice, that person would be wronged by God who would offer a worldly life of comfort but deny eternal life. Why would wealth ever have been found within creation if it causes only death?”[12] This full-throated defense of wealth and, notably, the moral neutrality of (his) inheritance, rounds out a treatise full of startling theological moves.
The first and perhaps most striking thing Clement does is make the case for an allegorical interpretation of the parable of the rich young ruler. He states that the rich young ruler’s sin wasn’t that he failed to give up his wealth to the poor, but rather that he failed to understand that Jesus was speaking figuratively. “‘Sell all that you possess’: what does that mean? It does not mean as some superficially suppose, that he should throw away all that he owns and abandon his property. Rather he is to banish those attitudes toward wealth that permeate his whole life, his desires, interests, and anxiety.”[13]
Instead of requiring the wealthy to first rid themselves of their wealth, Clement believes that the new and unique message of Christ is that he is asking both the wealthy and the poor to dispossess themselves of their inner passion and desire for wealth.[14] Reflecting his indebtedness to Stoicism, Clement argues that the literal renunciation of wealth and possessions that Jesus speaks about is best understood as a new command to renounce and eliminate inner passions. “If an affluent person can control the power that wealth brings and remains modest and self-controlled, seeking God and placing God above all else, that person can follow the commandments as a poor individual, one who is free and unencumbered by the wounds of wealth.”[15] Clement effectively takes a Stoic’s crowbar to widen Jesus' eye of the needle so that the rich can pass through easily.
In discussing this parable, Clement also engages in a biblical sleight of hand that would set an important precedent by relegating the dispossession of wealth to ascetics and monks. “In the patristic era, the parable of the rich young man - a parable which appears in all three synoptics - was invariably quoted in the version of Matthew, who, unlike the other evangelists, added the qualification ‘if you wish to be perfect’ to Christ’s challenge to the rich man…”[16] Although Clement was using the Marcan text in The Rich Young Ruler, he inserts “if you wish to be perfect” at the corresponding point in his quoting of the passage. “Thus, the command to sell everything and to live a life of voluntary poverty literally became a counsel of perfection to Christians, rather than a precept. The vita perfecta, with complete renunciation of wealth, was only required of ascetics and monks.”[17]
Having made wealth a matter of inner disposition, and having relegated the requirement of dispossession to the realm of ascetics and monks, Clement then argues that wealth should be considered as morally neutral as a tool. It is wealth’s utilitas that determines its moral value. Like a hammer, wealth can be used to build up or destroy, and the Christian is uniquely able to offer wealth for the building up of righteousness. Therefore, wealthy Christians should not be asked to give up their wealth but rather offer it to the glory of God, including by directing it toward the building up of the Church.
How Clement arrives here is as clever as it is circuitous. Having shown how both wealth and poverty are, in fact, inner spiritual matters and the possibility of being both pious and rich, Clement turns to examples in the Gospel in which Jesus assumes the wealthy have wealth to give away (Luke 16:9; Matt 6:20; Matt 25:41-43). The primary biblical example Clement uses is Jesus’ parable of the unjust steward in the Gospel of Luke, the very same one already mentioned above. Clement dwells on Jesus’ instruction to the disciples to be like the unjust steward in his use of dishonest wealth to make friends for themselves, “so that when it is gone they may welcome you into their homes.[18] Yet his interpretation dwells less on the release from debt which is such an important aspect of the story and instead centers on the use of dishonest wealth to make friends for one’s self. But if the wealthy must use dishonest wealth to make friends, Clement reasons, doesn't this mean they must retain their wealth rather than give it away to the poor? Clement concludes that the wealthy should therefore not give their wealth away but keep it for the building up of righteousness.
In Clement’s view, wealth is morally neutral - like a craftsman tool - which can be wielded in a variety of ways. Because it isn't inherently evil, as so many of his predecessors had claimed, wealth can therefore be retained and put to good use. “An instrument, used with skill, produces a work of art, but it is not the instrument’s fault if it is used wrongly. Wealth is such an instrument. It can be used rightly to produce righteousness. If it is used wrongly, it is not the fault of wealth itself but of the user. Wealth is the tool, not the craftsman.[19] Distinctly absent are prior Christians' views of wealth as the fruit of stealing and exploitation, and the accumulation of wealth as the sinful withholding of that which was intended for the common good.
Augustine embraced and expanded on Clement's view of wealth's utilitas in the fifth century to make one of those breathtaking theological arguments that would serve the Church well as the Roman empire crumbled and its own institutions came to replace the prior systems and structures in late antiquity. Augustine held that insomuch as the moral value of wealth was determined by its use, it was the Church alone that should be able to own property as it was the Church alone that used this wealth to God’s glory.[20] He conceded, however, that such a move would result in societal disruption and so said that this transfer of all property to the Church should not take place, or at least not immediately so.
Finally, and perhaps most disturbingly, Clement’s narrow focus on the interior attitude one brings to wealth - rather than external wealth itself - allowed for the ushering in of the well-established Roman view of ‘the unworthy poor’. It is important to linger on this point for a while as it suggests a connection between our current notions of wealth stewardship and ancient Roman notions of detachment and outright disdain for the destitute.
With wealth now spiritualized, Clement made the case for the honorable rich, those who lived with humility and detachment from their wealth and used it for the glory of God, and contrasted these honorable wealthy from the unworthy poor who were so rich in vices and avarice despite their external poverty that they did not merit the generosity of the wealthy. Much like the moralists who would have clucked their tongues at the image of a wealthy woman giving to a beggar, Clement embraces the notion of the ‘unworthy poor.’ “Again, in the same way there is a genuinely poor person and also a counterfeit and falsely named: the former is the one poor in spirit with inner personal poverty, and the latter, the one poor in a worldly sense with outward poverty. To the one poor in worldly goods but rich in vices, who is not poor in spirit and not rich toward God, God says: ‘Detach yourself from the alien possessions that are in your soul, so that you may become pure in heart and see God.”[21]
Shockingly, Clement's insistence on 'the unworthy poor' leads him to an outright rejection of the notion that the poor are preferentially blessed by God. For “It is not a great thing or desirable to be without any wealth, unless it be we are seeking eternal life. If it were, those who possess nothing - the destitute, the beggars seeking food, and the poor living in the streets, would become the blessed and loved of God, even though they did not know God or God’s righteousness. They would be granted eternal life on the basis of this extreme poverty and their lack of even the basic necessities of life!”[22]
One can’t help but wonder if Clement ever truly read or absorbed the significance of Jesus’ beatitudes.
The Question of Mercy
Through his strenuous defense of the wealthy and exasperation at the idea of the outwardly poor as being somehow preferentially blessed by God, Clement reveals himself as far more aligned with prevailing attitudes of the Roman elite toward the poor than many of his Christian counterparts. One of the most interesting points of contrast between Clement of Alexandria and other writers of early Christianity has to do with the seemingly unique appreciation that Christianity had for misericordia, or mercy, for the most destitute. Mercy – including the merciful forgiving of debts in Luke’s parable of the unjust steward – is an important way the Gospels describe God’s good news for the poor. In contrast, the Stoics, to whom Clement was profoundly indebted to, viewed misericordia toward the most vulnerable with suspicion and as a personal weakness, both because it undermined the ideal of being untroubled by emotion and because it suggested a transgressive questioning of the wisdom of how society was ordered.[23]
In Annaliese Parkin’s aptly named article, You do him no service: An exploration of pagan almsgiving, she echoes other scholars’ view that “Christian charity did not develop out of pagan munificence” and that “the two were concerned with fundamentally different sectors of ancient society.”[24] While there is extensive evidence that people were begging and received some support, Parkin maintains that these gifts primarily came from the lower rungs of ancient Roman society and that “organized material aid and services as the elite were prepared to extend to their social and economic inferiors were not directed at the poorest of Graeco-Roman society in the early imperial period... The destitute were never en masse targets of aid.”[25] In her evidence for the prevalence of begging and extreme levels of destitution, she notes that Roman laws had to explicitly prohibit parents from maiming their own children so as to increase the compassion and gifts extended to their families, practices which contemporary comparative poverty studies show as taking place in only the most desperate situations today.[26] Yet she argues that the compassion extended to the extremely destitute likely came from the lower rungs of society that interacted with people begging on the streets.
An anti-empathetic culture was embraced by the Roman elite. On the prevailing view of misericordia itself, Parkins notes: “The Stoics, in particular, saw in it a sickness and disturbance of the soul. Their ethics dictated that the wise man was to feel no pain over the misfortunes of his neighbour, for pity brings grief.”[27] She continues: “Understanding this is the key to understanding the Stoic disapproval of pity: pity was a self-regarding emotion, a pathos experienced by imagining oneself in the place of the pitied, which undermined the Stoic ideal of being untroubled by emotion, autarcheia.”
The Stoic emphasis on passionlessness - indeed, being without compassion - is what problematically connects Clement’s discussion of the honorable rich, the valuing of the accumulation of wealth, detachment from the destitute, and outright disdain for ‘the unworthy poor.’ There is a deliberately merciless quality to the way Clement discusses wealth and wealth stewardship that only begin to makes sense when considered in light of the elite’s prevailing attitudes toward the most vulnerable. Expressions of empathetic identification with the most destitute was viewed with profound suspicion as it was a breach of the hierarchical caste system that allowed ancient Roman society to continue to hum along.
In contrast, a part of Christianity’s peculiarity and gift was its belief that God’s mercy had resulted in God’s becoming human and subsequent identification with ‘the least of these’, and this comes through in other Christian writers’ appreciation - indeed, insistence - on misericordia as the basis for generosity.
John Chrysostom
The “Golden-Mouthed” John Chrysostom (c.347-407) represents a stark contrast to Clement of Alexandria in that he places God’s complete and compassionate identification with ‘the least of these’ as the centerpiece of his theology of generosity. Further, I’ve come to think that his Homily 50 on the Gospel of Matthew offers a pathway out of the tangled knot that Clement and his embrace of Greco-Roman wealth stewardship - with all its detachment and disdain for 'the unworthy poor' - have brought us to.
In the many homilies that Chrysostom delivered during his priestly ministry in Antioch and then as Patriarch in Constantinople, John repeatedly returned to the image of God judging the nations based on their care for the most vulnerable found in Matthew 25:31-46. In this passage, God judges the nations as decisively as a shepherd separating the sheep from the goats, with the crucial determining factor being whether people cared for the most vulnerable. In this passage from Matthew, the righteous and condemned are surprised to discover that God has been appearing to them throughout their lives in the faces of the hungry, the thirsty, the stranger, and prisoners. God considers the truly righteous to be those who fed the hungry, gave a cup of water to the thirsty, welcomed the stranger, and visited the prisoners; the condemned are those who turned the poor away and failed to do so.
Here God’s mercy and identification with the most vulnerable is complete: “Truly I tell you, just as you did it to one of the least of these who are members of my family, you did it to me.”[28] Swiss theologian Rudolf Brändle has explored how this passage served as the integrative force for much of John Chrysostom’s theology.[29]
Like many preachers who return to a passage over and over again, John Chrysostom frequently invoked Matthew 25:31-46 even when his homilies began elsewhere. John Chrysostom’s Homily 50 begins with a focus on Matthew 14:13-36, the story of Jesus walking on water and the healing of the sick in Gennesaret, but which ends with a powerful meditation of what it means to worship Christ’s body in both the Eucharist and ‘the least of these.’ In this homily, Chrysostom held that Christ’s body comes to us both in the Eucharist as well as in those who are hungry, strangers, and locked away in prisons. Always provocative, he pointed out that ‘a great gulf’ was created when Christian communities claimed to be devoted to Christ’s body in the Eucharist yet failed to see or care about this same body in the lives of the most marginalized: "For what is the profit, when His table indeed is full of golden cups, but He perishes with hunger?”
Regarding wealth stewardship, John argued that Christian communities needed to prioritize the least of these in society over the building up of individual or institutional wealth, primarily through service and the giving of alms. Christian faith requires that caring for the least of these takes precedence because it pertains to the eternal. He pointed out that while the Gospels does not explicitly condemn gifts for the building up of church buildings or the beautification of worship, this ‘sweetest passage’ clearly condemns neglecting to make gifts to the poor. Whereas both types of giving might be allowed and even important, compassion for the ‘least of these’ pertains to eternal life and therefore should take precedent.
In John Chrysostom, we find someone willing to speak hard truths in the face of Christianity’s increasing comfort with wealth stewardship, detachment, and neglect if not disdain of the most vulnerable. Tragically, his tendency to criticize the wealthy and bluntly point out the hypocrisies of the Church ultimately resulted in his condemnation, exile, and death. Chrysostom is one of the earliest martyrs to die at the intertwined hands of both the Church and imperial power. It was only after he died in exile in Pontus in 407 that the Church began to recover an appreciation for the significance of his preaching.
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Born in the middle of the fourth century, John Chrysostom’s father was a high-ranking military officer who died when he was still a child. Raised a Christian by his widowed mother, he began his career by studying law with the rhetorician Libanius but ultimately left this profession to become an ascetic hermit-monk. John returned to Antioch, however, when it became clear that his health could not sustain the rigors of asceticism. He was ordained a deacon in 381 and a priest in 386 in Antioch, where he appears to have flourished in this role.[30] Over the next twelve years, he would become known for his zealous preaching on materialism, wealth and poverty, and on matters that concerned the lives of the common people of the city, a reputation that earned him the Greek surname Chrysostom, meaning “golden-mouthed.”[31] [32]
It is very likely that Homily 50 was delivered during the latter part of John’s priesthood in Antioch and reflects some of his culminating thoughts about a city that was both highly prosperous and as prominent a Christian stronghold at the time as Rome, Constantinople, and Alexandria.[33] [34] Indeed, in Antioch by the middle of the fourth century, a majority of citizens were Christian and Christians were well-represented on the city’s council.[35] This did not prevent, however, extreme disparities in wealth and poverty. Rudolf Brandle notes: “The prosperous citizens had great palaces with marble pillars and halls, decorated with statues and frescoes. Some of the walls were covered with gold, and gold could even be found on the roofs. The splendor of the houses was matched by the luxury of the furnishings. The Antiochan upper class also showed their wealth in clothing and jewelry.”[36] John appears to have been particularly rankled by ostentatious displays of luxury and how this contrasted with the sufferings of the poor. He undoubtedly alienated more than a few wealthy Christians when he pointed out in a baptismal class that “Countless poor people have to go hungry so that you can wear a single ruby.”[37]
By the latter part of the fourth century, the wealth and splendor of Antioch’s great palaces extended to the city’s Christian churches. One of the finest examples was the octagonal Great Church, also known as the Golden House on account of its gilded wooden dome.[38] This was likely the site of where John preached Homily 50 which means that when he said “For what is the profit, when His table indeed is full of golden cups, but He perishes with hunger?” and urged congregants to prioritize almsgiving over church splendor, he was pointedly doing so in a highly decorated space of polished marble, brass, gold, and precious stones.[39]
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John Chrysostom is frequently described as both eloquent, outspoken, and tactless, and these characteristics are on full display in Homily 50.[40] This homily is a pleasure to read and was made all the more so in my case because I used the London publisher W. Smith’s 1885 translation which includes such pleasurable lines as “[Jesus] doth not even this, but departs, and in mid-sea permits the storm to arise, so that they might not so much as look for a hope of preservation from any quarter; and He lets them be tempest-tost all the night, thoroughly to awaken, as I suppose, their hardened heart.”[41]
As the starting point for Homily 50 was Matthew 14:13-36, John first dwelled on the fear the disciples must have felt as they were tossed and turned in the boat on the waters. John then transitioned to focus on the sick in Gennesaret who came in droves to meet Jesus so that “they might touch even the fringe of his cloak; and all who touched it were healed.”[42] In this story of the sick coming to touch Jesus’ cloak, John saw an example of what it meant to worship Christ’s body. This allowed him to begin a passionate argument on the meaning of the Eucharist. “Let us also then touch the hem of His garment, or rather, if we be willing, we have Him entire. For indeed His Body is set before us now, not His garment only, but even His Body; not for us to touch It only, but also to eat, and be filled.”[43] Then, under the golden dome of Antioch’s Great Church, Chrysostom asked the gathered congregants: “Wouldest thou do honour to Christ’s body? Neglect Him not when naked; do not, while here thou honourest Him with silken garments, neglect Him perishing without of cold and nakedness. For He that said, This is my Body, and by His word confirmed the fact, This Same said, Ye saw me an hungered, and fed Me not; and, inasmuch as ye did it to not to one of the least of these ye did it not to Me.[44]
In Homily 50 we hear Chrysostom exploring the theological significance of the Eucharist in light of God’s coming judgment of the nations as described in Matthew 25:31-46.[45] To worship the body of Christ in the Eucharist means that we must first worship the body of Christ in the most vulnerable:
“For what is the profit, when His table indeed is full of golden cups, but He perishes with hunger? First fill Him, being an hungerd, and then abundantly deck out His table also. Dost thou make Him a cup of gold, while thou givest Him not a cup of cold water? And what is the profit? Dost thou furnish His Table with cloths bespangled with gold, while to Himself thou affordest not even the necessary covering? And what good comes of it?”[46]
At the heart of Chrysostom’s argument is an awareness of hypocrisy -- or the “great gulf” as he calls it -- caused by the Antiochian Christians’ expression of Eucharistic devotion through investments in church buildings and splendor over compassionate almsgiving to the poor. John warned: “Let this then be thy thought with regard to Christ also, when He is going about a wanderer, and a stranger, needing a roof to cover Him; and thou, neglecting to receive Him, deckest out a pavement, and walls, and capitals of columns, and hangest up silver chains by means of lamps, but Himself bound in chains in prison thou wilt not even look upon.”[47]
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Interestingly, Chrysostom’s understanding of the Eucharist leads him to a subtler view of wealth stewardship that can serve to counterbalance the merciless version of stewardship of Clement of Alexandria. John doesn’t ultimately condemn the thoughtful stewardship of resources, but rather asked the congregants of the Great Church to first prioritize aid to the most vulnerable. In this, he managed to find a ‘middle way’ that remains sound advice for institutional leaders today.
John asked his hearers to reconsider their priorities by imagining Jesus’s reaction to the splendor of their churches and institutions: “For tell me, should you see one at a loss for necessary food, and omit appeasing his hunger while you first overlaid his table with silver; would he indeed thank thee, and not rather be indignant?” He goes on to describe Jesus as accounting such hypocrisy “an insult, and that the most extreme.”[48] “Let us flee then from this gulf; neither let us account it enough for our salvation, if after we have stripped widows and orphans, we offer for this Table a gold and jewelled cup.”[49]
In addition to being attentive to sources of wealth -- whether churches are stripping widows and orphans in the name of maximizing investment returns, for instance -- John’s homily and focus suggests that part of the role of institutional leaders is to reconnect ‘the golden cups’ with cups of water for the thirsty, the ‘bespangled cloth’ with cloaks for people weathering the cold, and the ‘silver chains of lamps’ with the welfare of prisoners in chains. Jesus is indignant, he argues, when Christians overlay his table with silver in supposed worship of his body while neglecting the bodies of the society’s ‘least of these.’
In this, Chrysostom was asking the Antiochian community to reflect on which investments are ultimately lasting. While investments in buildings are frequently thought of as long-term, ‘the sweetest passage’ of Matthew 25:31-46 insists that gifts to the poor pertain to the eternal. Chrysostom holds that while giving gifts to the building up of the Church is not explicitly prohibited by the Gospels, what is pointedly condemned is the neglect of ‘the least of these.’ Stated positively, golden cups are nice and all, but the worship of Christ’s body is most deeply expressed through a community’s love and service to the most vulnerable.
John offered almsgiving and service as a means of bridging this embarrassing gulf, a way that a Christian community that is lavishly devoted to the Eucharist could lavishly worship the body of Christ in the poor. “And these things I say, not forbidding such offerings to be provided; but requiring you, together with them, and before them, to give alms. For He accepts indeed the former, but much more the latter.”[50] In light of more recent, on-point critiques of charity which may serve the poor but fail to address the systems which cause such poverty, I would want to add to his list the importance of a focus on justice and systemic advocacy as a means for Christian institutions to fulfill ‘the sweetest passage’s” focus on ‘the least of these.’
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This seems like as good a time as any to briefly address one of the more bizarre concerns I’ve occasionally encountered while working in the Episcopal Church, namely the worry that the Church has become confused about its role and become overly involved in providing social services. I recall one particularly unctuous Episcopalian saying “We’re called to worship Christ, not be social workers!” Yet in Antioch - that is, in the very city where followers of Jesus were first called Christians[51] - the Great Church represents a striking example of an integrative model.
Partly as a result of Chrysostom’s preaching and leadership, the Great Church became known as a site of both liturgical splendor and significant social services. Early church historian Helen Rhee notes that John led multiple churches in Antioch, including the Great Church, to “organize major relief efforts for widows, orphans, virgins, beggars, homeless immigrants, the sick, and the poor through church-administered orphanages, hostels, and hospitals.”[52] Even as he critiqued the congregants’ focus on church splendor, Chrysostom’s homilies also included descriptions of the Great Church’s extensive ministries including a hostel for immigrants, a hospital for the incurably sick, and four dining halls where widows had regular meals.[53] The organizational support for these services was impressive and rigorous. There was a register of widows and “the priest or deacon charged with these lists was responsible for ensuring that no unworthy widows, or others who could live from their own means, tainted the table of the poor.”[54]
Beyond Antioch, there is even more extensive evidence of Christian churches serving as a social safety net for the poor in the fourth and fifth centuries. A particularly striking example are fifth century papyrological memos between Egyptian churches that offer insight into the day-to-day logistics of this safety net for the poor. In one of the memos, an unidentified Christian in hagia ekklesia requested a coat for a widow named Sophia from the steward of Saints Cosmos and Damian church. “[The steward] is assumed to have a store of coats ready for just such a request. This is not surprising; churches are known to have stockpiled clothes for charity.”[55] The writer of this essay, Adam Serfass, goes on to describe how when civil officials inventoried the possessions of one North African church in the early fourth century, they found 82 womens’ tunics and 47 pairs of womens shoes. “These items were surely meant for distribution to widows supported by the church.”[56]
Personally, I find such evidence to be profoundly moving evidence of how closely aligned social service has always been to Christian identity and worship. Alongside the theological treatises and powerful homilies that remain from this period, these memos requesting specific aid, inventories of shoes and winter cloaks, and descriptions of a registrar of widows, speak to the what Christianity is and can be. Unlike Clement’s disdain for the ‘unworthy poor’ and some church leaders’ dislike of churches becoming overly involved in what they see as social work, such evidence reveals the extent to which Christians have long been engaged in the work of distributing food, clothes, and relief aid to the most vulnerable. These are their own sorts of treatises on love, ones written in carefully maintained lists, cloaks and shoes, and feeding programs.
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Tragically, John Chrysostom’s story has a miserable end, an undoing that is deeply connected with his characteristic bluntness, his focus on ‘the least of these’, and the clash of civilizations this represented with the prevailing Greco-Roman attitude of detachment and disdain toward the poor.
In 398, John was unexpectedly called from Antioch to Constantinople to be ordained Patriarch. As was the case in Antioch, John preached forcefully against abuses of wealth and power, though in Constantinople he did so in the shadow of the Roman emperor Arcadius’ court and clergy. As was the case with the Great Church, he did more than simply preach but also began making moves to institutionalize a preferential option for the poor.
One of John’s early acts was to cut the budget of the bishop’s household and use the funds to support existing hostels and hospitals; he also began making plans to build several more.[57] It was as he was making these plans that he ran headlong into fourth century NIMBY-ism, the forceful opposition from wealthy estate holders to his proposal for building a leper colony just outside the city. The landed proprietors whose villas adjoined the proposed colony objected to the project.[58] Helen Rhee maintains that “the combination of his brutal honesty, asceticism, tactlessness, and uncompromising intensity for reform, joined with the enmity of the Patriarch of Alexandria and empress Eudoxia, brought about his downfall.”
John was deposed in 403, just five years after he arrived in Constantinople. He was subsequently recalled only to be deposed again and was subsequently exiled to Armenia. Tellingly, it was upon his being exiled that the work on the leper colony ceased.[59] [60] When it became clear that John was still able to have wide influence and argue his cause through correspondence, he was sent even further away, to Pontus at the eastern end of the Black Sea. He died as a result of the journey in 407.[61]
It was only after his death that John’s reputation was restored. Thirty-one years after being exiled to Pontus, John’s relics were brought back to Constantinople and received by emperor Theodosius II, the son of emperor Arcadius and Eudoxia.[62] And while today Chrysostom’s homilies are studied for their excellence of form, considerably less attention is paid to his passionate perspective on issues of wealth and poverty that are woven throughout.
Beyond Wealth Stewardship
Ten years after my conversation with the cluster of Latinx leaders in North Carolina, I am no longer certain that ‘wealth stewardship’ is something to which Christians are called. Christian wealth stewardship has deep roots in Clement’s baptizing of Greco-Roman views of wealth and poverty which prized detachment over compassion, and distance from if not outright disdain of “the unworthy poor.” Too often, it has meant that congregations and other ecclesiastical institutions have pursued growth in financial wealth while failing to ask the second set of questions regarding what this is all for. Wealth stewardship’s origins make it an uneasy fit with the examples of compassionate generosity that are a recurring theme of the Gospels.
Perhaps the only thing that I agree with Clement of Alexandria on is that Luke’s parable of the unjust steward in Luke 16:1-13 may be an intriguing model for institutional leaders today. I come to a very different conclusion than he does in reading the text, however. If we allow ourselves to identify with the figure of the unjust steward, we might see that God is calling us to repentance and transformation of what we have. Our role is not the continuous building up of institutional wealth, but that of releasing unjust wealth through Jubilee-inspired acts of generosity. But what does that look like today?
I will confess that I am reflecting on all of this particularly in my own role as an institutional leader, as someone who is helping to lead an Anglican Studies program at a seminary. Frankly, seminaries can become remarkably disconnected from their wider communities, cloistered islands of privilege that have little to do with the lives and needs of ‘the least of these’ just outside the walls of the institution. As I know from my own experience both as a past seminarian and now institutional leader, this takes place even in places whose stated values include justice and compassion for the poor. How one goes about reconnecting the ‘golden cups’ with ‘cups of water’ is a live question for me, a question that speaks to the hard work of transforming institutional resources toward the worship of Christ in the least of these. Personally, it is an exciting question because it is a deeply faithful one, a transformative challenge that moves beyond the theologically shallow traditions of Christian wealth stewardship that too often confuse and equate institutional wealth with God’s mission and grounds thinking about wealth back in the Gospel.
John Chrysostom’s Homily 50 is an illuminating example, then, of what this looks like. For John, worshiping Christ’s body in the Eucharist requires honoring the Christ who comes to us in the personhood of the least of these. With characteristic bluntness, he critiques churches that prioritize golden cups over cups of water for the thirsty, bespangled altar cloths (and vestments!) over winter coats for the poor, who fundraise for beautiful lamps hung from silver chains but have never gotten around to visiting people held in chains in prisons. While Chrysostom doesn’t outright condemn such investments, he urges fierce clarity around what actually matters to God and what pertains to the eternal. Chrysostom argues that while wealth directed toward the building up of our institutions may not be explicitly condemned by the Gospels, eternal salvation has to do with whether we – through our individual lives and institutions - are engaged in the compassionate caring for the least of these. Chrysostom describes a Jesus who would be incensed by common financial practices and investment strategies that end up stripping widows and orphans in the name of financial growth; it is in acts of charity, service, and justice building that we all begin to live out God’s call.
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[1] Smith, Stephen M. “Labor Exploitation on Pre-1952 Haciendas in the Lower Valley of Cochabamba, Bolivia.” The Journal of Developing Areas, vol. 11, no. 2, 1977, pp. 227–244. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/4190461. Accessed 23 Oct. 2020.
[2] Beard, Mary. SPQR, 444
[3] Beard, Mary. SPQR, 440
[4] McGuckin, John. The Path of Christianity: The First Thousand Years. Page 1027
[5] Juvenal 3.153-4 translated by Neville Morley in “The poor in the city of Rome” in Poverty in the Roman World. 35
[6] Parkin, Annaliese. ‘You do him no service’: An Exploration of Pagan Almsgiving', Poverty in the Roman World. 62
[7] McGuckin, John. The Path of Christianity: The First Thousand Years. Page 1026
[8] Parkin, Annaliese. ‘You do him no service’: An Exploration of Pagan Almsgiving', Poverty in the Roman World.68
[9] Matthew 19:16-30; Mark 10:17-31; Luke 18:18-30
[10] McCullough, Diarmaid. A History of Christianity: The First Three Thousand Years.147
[11] McCullough 149
[12] Clement of Alexandria, The Rich Young Ruler, in Helen Rhee’s Wealth and Poverty in Early Christianity. Ad Fontes: Early Christian Sources.Location 844
[13] Clement of Alexandria, The Rich Young Ruler, in Helen Rhee’s Wealth and Poverty in Early Christianity. Ad Fontes: Early Christian Sources, Location 764
[14] Clement of Alexandria, The Rich Young Ruler, in Helen Rhee’s Wealth and Poverty in Early Christianity. Ad Fontes: Early Christian Sources. Location 793
[15] Clement of Alexandria, The Rich Young Ruler, in Helen Rhee’s Wealth and Poverty in Early Christianity. Ad Fontes: Early Christian Sources. Location 844
[16] Hengstmengel, Joost W. ‘Wealth’. Brill Encyclopedia of Early Christianity Online. Ed. David G.Hunter, Paul J.J. vanGeest, & Bert JanLietaert Peerbolte. Brill Reference Online. Web. 29 Sept. 2020.
[17] Hengstmengel, Joost W. ‘Wealth’. Brill Encyclopedia of Early Christianity Online. Ed. David G.Hunter, Paul J.J. vanGeest, & Bert JanLietaert Peerbolte. Brill Reference Online. Web. 29 Sept. 2020.
[18] Luke 16.9
[19] Clement of Alexandria, The Rich Young Ruler, in Helen Rhee’s Wealth and Poverty in Early Christianity. Ad Fontes: Early Christian Sources. Loc 793
[20] Stender, Hennie. "Economics in the Church Fathers" in Oxford Handbook of Christianity and Economics. Page 27.
[21] Clement of Alexandria, The Rich Young Ruler, in Helen Rhee’s Wealth and Poverty in Early Christianity. Ad Fontes: Early Christian Sources. Location 804
[22] Clement of Alexandria, The Rich Young Ruler, in Helen Rhee’s Wealth and Poverty in Early Christianity. Ad Fontes: Early Christian Sources. Location 774
[23] Parkin, Annaliese. ‘You do him no service’: An Exploration of Pagan Almsgiving.' Poverty in the Roman World. Page 64
[24] Parkin, Annaliese. ‘You do him no service’: An Exploration of Pagan Almsgiving.' Poverty in the Roman World. Page 60
[25] Parkin, Annaliese. ‘You do him no service’: An Exploration of Pagan Almsgiving.' Poverty in the Roman World. Page 60
[26] Parkin, Annaliese. ‘You do him no service’: An Exploration of Pagan Almsgiving.' Poverty in the Roman World. Page 71
[27] Parkin, Annaliese. ‘You do him no service’: An Exploration of Pagan Almsgiving.' Poverty in the Roman World. Page 62
[28] Matthew 25:40
[29] Rudolf Brändle. “The Sweetest Passage” in Wealth and Poverty in Early Church and Society, Susan R. Homan, Ed., Baker Academic, 2008.
[30] Attwater, Donald. John Chrysostom. Penguin Dictionary of Saints. 1983. Page 194
[31] Rhee, Helen. Introduction to “Wealth and Poverty in Early Christianity” (Ad Fontes: Early Christian Sources) . Augsburg Fortress. Kindle Edition.
[32] Attwater, Donald. John Chrysostom. Penguin Dictionary of Saints. 1983. Page 194
[33] Homilies of S. John Chrysostom, Archbishop of Constantinople, on the Gospel of St. Matthew. Translated, with notes and indices., v.18. Published London: W. Smith,1885. Rights Public Domain in the United States, Google-digitized. Permanent URL https://hdl.handle.net/2027/mdp.39076002354541
[34] Rhee, Helen. Wealth and Poverty in Early Christianity (Ad Fontes: Early Christian Sources) . Augsburg Fortress. Kindle Edition.
[35] Golden Mouth: The Story of John Chrysostom--ascetic, Preacher, Bishop, J. N. D. Kelly
[36] Rudolf Brändle. “The Sweetest Passage” in Wealth and Poverty in Early Church and Society, Susan R. Homan, Ed., Baker Academic, 2008.
[37] Rudolf Brändle. “The Sweetest Passage” in Wealth and Poverty in Early Church and Society, Susan R. Homan, Ed., Baker Academic, 2008.
[38] Golden Mouth: The Story of John Chrysostom--ascetic, Preacher, Bishop, J. N. D. Kelly
[39] Rudolf Brändle. “The Sweetest Passage” in Wealth and Poverty in Early Church and Society, Susan R. Homan, Ed., Baker Academic, 2008.
[40] Attwater, Donald. John Chrysostom. Penguin Dictionary of Saints. 1983. Page 194
[41] Homily 50. Homilies of S. John Chrysostom, Archbishop of Constantinople, on the Gospel of St. Matthew. Translated, with notes and indices., v.18. Published London: W. Smith,1885. Rights Public Domain in the United States, Google-digitized. Permanent URL https://hdl.handle.net/2027/mdp.39076002354541
[42] Matthew 14:36
[43] Homily 50, part 3. Homilies of S. John Chrysostom, Archbishop of Constantinople, on the Gospel of St. Matthew. Translated, with notes and indices., v.18. Published London: W. Smith,1885. Rights Public Domain in the United States, Google-digitized. Permanent URL https://hdl.handle.net/2027/mdp.39076002354541
[44] Homily 50, part 4. Homilies of S. John Chrysostom, Archbishop of Constantinople, on the Gospel of St. Matthew. Translated, with notes and indices., v.18. Published London: W. Smith,1885. Rights Public Domain in the United States, Google-digitized. Permanent URL https://hdl.handle.net/2027/mdp.39076002354541
[45] Wet, Chris De. ‘John Chrysostom’. In Brill Encyclopedia of Early Christianity Online, edited by David G.Hunter, Paul J.J. vanGeest, and Bert JanLietaert Peerbolte. Accessed August 8, 2020. doi:http://dx.doi.org/10.1163/2589-7993_EECO_SIM_00001763.
[46] Homily 50, part 4. Homilies of S. John Chrysostom, Archbishop of Constantinople, on the Gospel of St. Matthew. Translated, with notes and indices., v.18. Published London: W. Smith,1885. Rights Public Domain in the United States, Google-digitized. Permanent URL https://hdl.handle.net/2027/mdp.39076002354541
[47] Homily 50, part 4. Homilies of S. John Chrysostom, Archbishop of Constantinople, on the Gospel of St. Matthew. Translated, with notes and indices., v.18. Published London: W. Smith,1885. Rights Public Domain in the United States, Google-digitized. Permanent URL https://hdl.handle.net/2027/mdp.39076002354541
[48] Homily 50, part 4. Homilies of S. John Chrysostom, Archbishop of Constantinople, on the Gospel of St. Matthew. Translated, with notes and indices., v.18. Published London: W. Smith,1885. Rights Public Domain in the United States, Google-digitized. Permanent URL https://hdl.handle.net/2027/mdp.39076002354541
[49] Section 4 of Homily 50. Homilies of S. John Chrysostom, Archbishop of Constantinople, on the Gospel of St. Matthew. Translated, with notes and indices., v.18. Published London: W. Smith,1885. Rights Public Domain in the United States, Google-digitized. Permanent URL https://hdl.handle.net/2027/mdp.39076002354541
[50] Homily 50, part 4. Homilies of S. John Chrysostom, Archbishop of Constantinople, on the Gospel of St. Matthew. Translated, with notes and indices., v.18. Published London: W. Smith,1885. Rights Public Domain in the United States, Google-digitized. Permanent URL https://hdl.handle.net/2027/mdp.39076002354541
[51] Acts 11:20-21
[52] Rhee, Helen. Wealth and Poverty in Early Christianity (Ad Fontes: Early Christian Sources) . Augsburg Fortress. Kindle Edition.
[53] Hom. Matt 66.3
[54] Rudolf Brändle. “The Sweetest Passage” in Wealth and Poverty in Early Church and Society, Susan R. Homan, Ed., Baker Academic, 2008. Page 130.
[55] Serfass, Adam. Wine for Widows. Wealth and Poverty in Early Church and Society. Page 95
[56] Serfass, Adam. Wine for Widows. Wealth and Poverty in Early Church and Society. Page 95
[57] Rhee, Helen. Wealth and Poverty in Early Christianity (Ad Fontes: Early Christian Sources) . Augsburg Fortress. Kindle Edition.
[58] Rudolf Brändle. “The Sweetest Passage” in Wealth and Poverty in Early Church and Society, Susan R. Homan, Ed., Baker Academic, 2008. Page 132
[59] Rhee, Helen. Wealth and Poverty in Early Christianity (Ad Fontes: Early Christian Sources) . Augsburg Fortress. Kindle Edition.
[60] Rudolf Brändle. “The Sweetest Passage” in Wealth and Poverty in Early Church and Society, Susan R. Homan, Ed., Baker Academic, 2008. Page 132
[61] Attwater, Donald. John Chrysostom. Penguin Dictionary of Saints. 1983. Page 194
[62] Attwater, Donald. John Chrysostom. Penguin Dictionary of Saints. 1983. Page 194
[33] Homilies of S. John Chrysostom, Archbishop of Constantinople, on the Gospel of St. Matthew. Translated, with notes and indices., v.18. Published London: W. Smith,1885. Rights Public Domain in the United States, Google-digitized. Permanent URL https://hdl.handle.net/2027/mdp.39076002354541
[34] Rhee, Helen. Wealth and Poverty in Early Christianity (Ad Fontes: Early Christian Sources) . Augsburg Fortress. Kindle Edition.
[35] Golden Mouth: The Story of John Chrysostom--ascetic, Preacher, Bishop, J. N. D. Kelly
[36] Rudolf Brändle. “The Sweetest Passage” in Wealth and Poverty in Early Church and Society, Susan R. Homan, Ed., Baker Academic, 2008.
[37] Rudolf Brändle. “The Sweetest Passage” in Wealth and Poverty in Early Church and Society, Susan R. Homan, Ed., Baker Academic, 2008.
[38] Golden Mouth: The Story of John Chrysostom--ascetic, Preacher, Bishop, J. N. D. Kelly
[39] Rudolf Brändle. “The Sweetest Passage” in Wealth and Poverty in Early Church and Society, Susan R. Homan, Ed., Baker Academic, 2008.
[40] Attwater, Donald. John Chrysostom. Penguin Dictionary of Saints. 1983. Page 194
[41] Homily 50. Homilies of S. John Chrysostom, Archbishop of Constantinople, on the Gospel of St. Matthew. Translated, with notes and indices., v.18. Published London: W. Smith,1885. Rights Public Domain in the United States, Google-digitized. Permanent URL https://hdl.handle.net/2027/mdp.39076002354541
[42] Matthew 14:36
[43] Homily 50, part 3. Homilies of S. John Chrysostom, Archbishop of Constantinople, on the Gospel of St. Matthew. Translated, with notes and indices., v.18. Published London: W. Smith,1885. Rights Public Domain in the United States, Google-digitized. Permanent URL https://hdl.handle.net/2027/mdp.39076002354541
[44] Homily 50, part 4. Homilies of S. John Chrysostom, Archbishop of Constantinople, on the Gospel of St. Matthew. Translated, with notes and indices., v.18. Published London: W. Smith,1885. Rights Public Domain in the United States, Google-digitized. Permanent URL https://hdl.handle.net/2027/mdp.39076002354541
[45] Wet, Chris De. ‘John Chrysostom’. In Brill Encyclopedia of Early Christianity Online, edited by David G.Hunter, Paul J.J. vanGeest, and Bert JanLietaert Peerbolte. Accessed August 8, 2020. doi:http://dx.doi.org/10.1163/2589-7993_EECO_SIM_00001763.
[46] Homily 50, part 4. Homilies of S. John Chrysostom, Archbishop of Constantinople, on the Gospel of St. Matthew. Translated, with notes and indices., v.18. Published London: W. Smith,1885. Rights Public Domain in the United States, Google-digitized. Permanent URL https://hdl.handle.net/2027/mdp.39076002354541
[47] Homily 50, part 4. Homilies of S. John Chrysostom, Archbishop of Constantinople, on the Gospel of St. Matthew. Translated, with notes and indices., v.18. Published London: W. Smith,1885. Rights Public Domain in the United States, Google-digitized. Permanent URL https://hdl.handle.net/2027/mdp.39076002354541
[48] Homily 50, part 4. Homilies of S. John Chrysostom, Archbishop of Constantinople, on the Gospel of St. Matthew. Translated, with notes and indices., v.18. Published London: W. Smith,1885. Rights Public Domain in the United States, Google-digitized. Permanent URL https://hdl.handle.net/2027/mdp.39076002354541
[49] Section 4 of Homily 50. Homilies of S. John Chrysostom, Archbishop of Constantinople, on the Gospel of St. Matthew. Translated, with notes and indices., v.18. Published London: W. Smith,1885. Rights Public Domain in the United States, Google-digitized. Permanent URL https://hdl.handle.net/2027/mdp.39076002354541
[50] Homily 50, part 4. Homilies of S. John Chrysostom, Archbishop of Constantinople, on the Gospel of St. Matthew. Translated, with notes and indices., v.18. Published London: W. Smith,1885. Rights Public Domain in the United States, Google-digitized. Permanent URL https://hdl.handle.net/2027/mdp.39076002354541
[51] Acts 11:20-21
[52] Rhee, Helen. Wealth and Poverty in Early Christianity (Ad Fontes: Early Christian Sources) . Augsburg Fortress. Kindle Edition.
[53] Hom. Matt 66.3
[54] Rudolf Brändle. “The Sweetest Passage” in Wealth and Poverty in Early Church and Society, Susan R. Homan, Ed., Baker Academic, 2008. Page 130.
[55] Serfass, Adam. Wine for Widows. Wealth and Poverty in Early Church and Society. Page 95
[56] Serfass, Adam. Wine for Widows. Wealth and Poverty in Early Church and Society. Page 95
[57] Rhee, Helen. Wealth and Poverty in Early Christianity (Ad Fontes: Early Christian Sources) . Augsburg Fortress. Kindle Edition.
[58] Rudolf Brändle. “The Sweetest Passage” in Wealth and Poverty in Early Church and Society, Susan R. Homan, Ed., Baker Academic, 2008. Page 132
[59] Rhee, Helen. Wealth and Poverty in Early Christianity (Ad Fontes: Early Christian Sources) . Augsburg Fortress. Kindle Edition.
[60] Rudolf Brändle. “The Sweetest Passage” in Wealth and Poverty in Early Church and Society, Susan R. Homan, Ed., Baker Academic, 2008. Page 132
[61] Attwater, Donald. John Chrysostom. Penguin Dictionary of Saints. 1983. Page 194
[62] Attwater, Donald. John Chrysostom. Penguin Dictionary of Saints. 1983. Page 194
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